I spent about 3 hours with one last night at a demo by a Sig rep for Third Coast Thermal. The MSRP is $2500. Much of the time was spent watching horses, dogs, people, and a couple of bunnies and a skunk. We were looking at a pre-production model which was 1x and 2x.

We got to use the unit outside in a park-like pasture (interspersed with some large trees) at distances out to 500 yards or so. Recognizing the horses at 400-450 yards wasn't an issue when seen in profile. The horses were the most distance animal target we had.

My impressions are this. You have a large view screen and you can actually make out good silhouette details on animals at distances to make this a huntable optic for distances most night hunters hunt. I would say that you could hunt coyotes at 130 yards and rabbits at 80 yards. You could hunt elk or bison at 400 yards if you were in a survival situation. Hogs would probably be as far as 200 for an adult hog. These would not be precise shots, but general shoulder-area shots. Those are extremes and not what I would suggest should be the norm. So in reality, hunting rabbits inside 50 yards would be no problem. Hunting coyotes 50-100 yards would be no problem. We didn't see any hogs for comparison, but I would say out to 150 would be no problem adult hogs. These would be with making properly placed shots. What this means is that the animal was of sufficient size on the screen and the reticle lines were sufficiently thin that you could place the crosshair well enough to not just hit the shoulder, but a particular area of the shoulder.

1x FOV is wider and has more clarity. 2x FOV is smaller and there really isn't a lot of clarity/resolution lost. Flipping back and forth between the two did not give me the impression of going in and out of focus as happens with my FLIR PS32 spotting scope, where 2x fuzzes up noticeably compared to 1x.

The unit is actually smaller-looking in real life than in some of the Sig ads for it. It is lightweight. It runs on 2 CR123 batteries for up to about 20 hours. The screen is fairly large and the single joy stick-type controller/selector works well and the firmware is quite responsive.

The Echo 1 does auto-NUC. Sig calls the process something else, but basically NUCing is the process of clearing the microbolometer (thermal sensor) of noise that builds up during use. Some thermal scopes do this automatically, some allow for it to be done when the user initiates it, and some require the user to do it manually by actually covering the lens and pressing buttons to make the NUC happen. The Echo 1 does it automatically with no user input needed.

I liked how the firmware worked for going through the basic parameters that the user would like to change. You could cycle through all of these quickly in one direction. It had 4 levels of screen brightness. Zoom was 1x and 2x. Screen colors (white hot, black hot, green, red, blue, and I seem to recall purple backgrounds with white hot), and 1 other thing that I don't recall. If you go into the menu, you can change the reticle and reticle color. There are several reticles and 4 or 5 color options. The unit can take photos (something I didn't mess with). It has a output jack that should work for video recording, downloading, and supposedly will work for firmware updates in the future.

I mentioned that the unit was smaller than I expected and was quite light, but it is taller tan your normal optic. On the rifle on which it was mounted, the optic bore was approximately 4" over the barrel bore and normally you would have ~2-2.5" with other optics.

There is the issue of backlighting the hunter's face with the light of the screen. It is a concern I would have for hunting. Some folks here have suggested that with some of the large display night optics they use that backlighting isn't an issue or isn't much of an issue. In the elevated stand, I don't think it is as much of a problem as it might be on the ground. However, going into the red mode and turning down the brightness really goes a long way to reducing backlighting.

You see in the image above that the Echo is mounted pretty far forward. The guy with the gun chose the position. He is older (like me) and has presbyopia (seeing close is difficult, comes with middle age for many folks). For the younger folks at the demo, having the Echo mounted over the ejection port was a reasonable distance for them. Most other thermal optics get beyond this eye distance issue with a diopter lens, which would make the unit larger and more expensive.

While this billed is a "reflex" sight, it has a focus which means it isn't a reflex sight unless it is focused for the distance you plan to use. You can get by with setting it at a generic hunting distance, say 75 yards and then get by with hunting with it, scanning, etc. and if you see a critter at a significantly different distance, adjust the focus accordingly for proper clarity, much like you would run many thermal optics that have an objective focus.

Bottom Line Thoughts - Neat entry level thermal optic. It is not going to give you the image of a $5-7K thermal scope and it is not meant to. You aren't likely to be making head shots on a hog at 250 yards when the little crosshairs cover a significant portion of the head at that distance. However, for a person who wants thermal for around the barnyard varmint control or the hunter with a feeder at 75 yards from his stand, this will definitely work well enough. Sig Sauer warranties their products for 5 years, which is pretty nice.

Third Coast Thermal will be carrying these and with a little luck, I might get to field one early on and do some actual hunting work with it.

I spent about 3 hours with one last night at a demo by a Sig rep for Third Coast Thermal. The MSRP is $2500. Much of the time was spent watching horses, dogs, people, and a couple of bunnies and a skunk. We were looking at a pre-production model which was 1x and 2x.

We got to use the unit outside in a park-like pasture (interspersed with some large trees) at distances out to 500 yards or so. Recognizing the horses at 400-450 yards wasn't an issue when seen in profile. The horses were the most distance animal target we had.

My impressions are this. You have a large view screen and you can actually make out good silhouette details on animals at distances to make this a huntable optic for distances most night hunters hunt. I would say that you could hunt coyotes at 130 yards and rabbits at 80 yards. You could hunt elk or bison at 400 yards if you were in a survival situation. Hogs would probably be as far as 200 for an adult hog. These would not be precise shots, but general shoulder-area shots. Those are extremes and not what I would suggest should be the norm. So in reality, hunting rabbits inside 50 yards would be no problem. Hunting coyotes 50-100 yards would be no problem. We didn't see any hogs for comparison, but I would say out to 150 would be no problem adult hogs. These would be with making properly placed shots. What this means is that the animal was of sufficient size on the screen and the reticle lines were sufficiently thin that you could place the crosshair well enough to not just hit the shoulder, but a particular area of the shoulder.

1x FOV is wider and has more clarity. 2x FOV is smaller and there really isn't a lot of clarity/resolution lost. Flipping back and forth between the two did not give me the impression of going in and out of focus as happens with my FLIR PS32 spotting scope, where 2x fuzzes up noticeably compared to 1x.

The unit is actually smaller-looking in real life than in some of the Sig ads for it. It is lightweight. It runs on 2 CR123 batteries for up to about 20 hours. The screen is fairly large and the single joy stick-type controller/selector works well and the firmware is quite responsive.

The Echo 1 does auto-NUC. Sig calls the process something else, but basically NUCing is the process of clearing the microbolometer (thermal sensor) of noise that builds up during use. Some thermal scopes do this automatically, some allow for it to be done when the user initiates it, and some require the user to do it manually by actually covering the lens and pressing buttons to make the NUC happen. The Echo 1 does it automatically with no user input needed.

I liked how the firmware worked for going through the basic parameters that the user would like to change. You could cycle through all of these quickly in one direction. It had 4 levels of screen brightness. Zoom was 1x and 2x. Screen colors (white hot, black hot, green, red, blue, and I seem to recall purple backgrounds with white hot), and 1 other thing that I don't recall. If you go into the menu, you can change the reticle and reticle color. There are several reticles and 4 or 5 color options. The unit can take photos (something I didn't mess with). It has a output jack that should work for video recording, downloading, and supposedly will work for firmware updates in the future.

I mentioned that the unit was smaller than I expected and was quite light, but it is taller tan your normal optic. On the rifle on which it was mounted, the optic bore was approximately 4" over the barrel bore and normally you would have ~2-2.5" with other optics.

There is the issue of backlighting the hunter's face with the light of the screen. It is a concern I would have for hunting. Some folks here have suggested that with some of the large display night optics they use that backlighting isn't an issue or isn't much of an issue. In the elevated stand, I don't think it is as much of a problem as it might be on the ground. However, going into the red mode and turning down the brightness really goes a long way to reducing backlighting.

You see in the image above that the Echo is mounted pretty far forward. The guy with the gun chose the position. He is older (like me) and has presbyopia (seeing close is difficult, comes with middle age for many folks). For the younger folks at the demo, having the Echo mounted over the ejection port was a reasonable distance for them. Most other thermal optics get beyond this eye distance issue with a diopter lens, which would make the unit larger and more expensive.

While this billed is a "reflex" sight, it has a focus which means it isn't a reflex sight unless it is focused for the distance you plan to use. You can get by with setting it at a generic hunting distance, say 75 yards and then get by with hunting with it, scanning, etc. and if you see a critter at a significantly different distance, adjust the focus accordingly for proper clarity, much like you would run many thermal optics that have an objective focus.

Bottom Line Thoughts - Neat entry level thermal optic. It is not going to give you the image of a $5-7K thermal scope and it is not meant to. You aren't likely to be making head shots on a hog at 250 yards when the little crosshairs cover a significant portion of the head at that distance. However, for a person who wants thermal for around the barnyard varmint control or the hunter with a feeder at 75 yards from his stand, this will definitely work well enough. Sig Sauer warranties their products for 5 years, which is pretty nice.

Third Coast Thermal will be carrying these and with a little luck, I might get to field one early on and do some actual hunting work with it.

It would be similar in the sense that it has an Eotech-like box and it is meant for typically shorter range work. Both optics work at distances where you would not need magnification (though the Echo 1 goes to digitally to 2x). You look through an Eotech and red dots but you look AT the Echo.

LOL, none of it is 'cheap' yet, but prices are coming down and new products are being developed. I really think this is a cool innovation. I won't have a good idea on how it hunts until getting to hunt with it, but it shows some promising capabilities.